Significant commercial potential

You may
think your idea has good commercial potential, but something else matters more:
other people have to think so too.

Significant
commercial potential means the prospect of sales and profit on a large enough scale to make all the
risk generated by your idea worth taking.

Businesses
in particular will need strong evidence that your product will sell, as they
are the ones who may have to spend millions of euros to get it to market. In
business there is no such thing as a
guaranteed winner. For every new product that sells well, there will be
other new products that sell poorly.

What
most companies will look for is:

Something
that can give them (usually through strong IP) a commanding or even monopoly
position in the market.

Something
that consumers will want in preference to competing products.

Something
that offers a good return on investment.

Something
that offers a clear, low-risk route to market.

From
your searches and investigations, what evidence can you present to companies or
investors that your idea has the potential to meet these requirements?

For
guidance, new products tend to fall into three broad categories:

Exceptional
products which dominate their market and set new standards.

Good but
unexciting products which offer opportunities for a business to increase its
profits or its market share.

Unexceptional
products which offer just one more choice among alternatives.

In which
category would most people place your idea?

You need
to evaluate any opinion you have had so far from businesses or individuals with
expert knowledge of relevant markets. A lack of evidence in favour of your idea
could mean one of three things:

The
commercial prospects for your idea are poor.

Your
idea may need re-thinking to make it more commercially viable.

Your
idea may only succeed if you become an entrepreneur and market it yourself.